Strange interview questions aren’t just a myth. Whether it’s a brain-teaser, controversial issue or just plain odd, they do crop up. That’s one of the reasons why you need to relax at interview and be yourself – if you’re stiff and over-prepared you may well freeze when confronted with a question out of left field.

The ‘Oxbridge’ interview is famous for odd-ball questions/situations. Tales of walking in to find the interviewer doing a headstand or being asked to throw a book out of the window achieved legendary status back at school. But the obscure interview doesn’t stop at uni.

Here are some weird questions to help open your mind:

“How many people are using Facebook in San Francisco at 2:30pm on a Friday?” – asked at Google, vendor relations manager candidate

“Just entertain me for five minutes, I’m not going to talk.” – asked at Acosta, leadership development program associate candidate.

“If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?” – asked at Hewlett-Packard, product marketing manager candidate

“What do you think of garden gnomes?” – asked at Trader Joe’s, team member candidate

“Would Mahatma Gandhi have made a good software engineer?” – asked at Deloitte, analyst candidate

“If you could be number one employee but have all your coworkers dislike you or you could be number 15 employee and have all your coworkers like you, which would you choose?” – asked at ADP, inside sales associate candidate

“How would you cure world hunger?” – asked at Amazon.com, software developer candidate

“Room, desk and c – which do you clean first ?” – asked at Pinkberry, shift lead candidate

“Given 20 ‘destructible’ light bulbs (which break at a certain height), and a building with 100 floors, how do you determine the height that the light bulbs break?” – asked at QUALCOMM, engineering candidate

“Name 5 uses of a stapler without staples.” – asked at EvaluServe, business analyst candidate

“How would you get an elephant into a refrigerator?” – asked at Horizon Group Properties, office assistant candidate

“You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?” – asked at Epic Systems, corp. project manager/implementation consultant candidate

“How many different ways can you get water from a lake at the foot of a mountain, up to the top of the mountain?” – asked at Disney Parks and Resorts, project engineering intern candidate

On Thursday 28th September, movemeon and On Purpose hosted an event for consultants and ex-consultants interested in building socially impactful careers. We were joined by Parita Doshi, Seigo Robinson, Sophie Runcorn and Jeroen Sabbe. These are 5 of the evening’s top tips